Looking at – and seeing – the world
April 6, 2020 Leave a comment
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Walking the locked down suburbs: sunrise, a new fence and a car.
Click onto the “early morning” tag (below) to see more images from the early hours of the day.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended.
Technique: TG-5 at 100mm (equiv); 400 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Vivid profile; south Bristol; 31 Mar 2020.
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April 5, 2020 Leave a comment
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Walking in the lockdown, on a gloriously sunny morning – and being grateful for the TG-5’s wide angle lens.
Click onto the “early morning” tag (below) to see more images from the early hours of the day.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window.
Technique: TG-5 at 25mm (equiv); 250 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Portrait profile; south Bristol; 31 Mar 2020.
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March 30, 2020 6 Comments
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Standing beside a road – at a bus stop, at dawn – and tilting the world.
Click onto the “early morning” tag (below) to see more images from the early hours of the day.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window.
Technique: TG-5 at 25mm (equiv); 3200 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Vivid profile; rotated; south Bristol; 1 Jan 2020.
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March 27, 2020 6 Comments
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For those who don’t know them, this is a telegraph pole with telephone lines radiating out from its top. Telephone engineers carry short ladders that take them up to the footholds on alternate sides of the pole; above these there is a double foothold on which the engineer can place both feet while leaning back, supported by a strap around the pole, to comfortably and safely work on the phone lines.
Click onto the “early morning” tag (below) to see more images from the early hours of the day.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window.
Technique: TG-5 at 70mm (equiv); 6,400 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Adobe Standard profile; south Bristol; 11 Feb 2020.
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March 22, 2020 18 Comments
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Early morning light along Tripps Drove, Godney Moor, Somerset Levels; 26 Jul 2012.
I’ve been thinking about doing something more impressionist for sometime, and this early morning stroll along Tripps Drove brought wonderful light – but there were horseflies too so it wasn’t all beautiful going! Gaussian blur provides the dreaminess.
Click upon the image to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended.
Technique: D700 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 400 ISO.
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March 22, 2020 Leave a comment
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Early morning sunlight inches across the side of a building.
Other images in the Bristol Street Scenes series are here: 1 2 3 4 5 . Searching on the “street” tag (below here) will also find these posts.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window.
Technique: X-T1 with 55-200 Fujinon lens at 183mm (equiv); 800 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Provia/Standard profile; central Bristol; 16 Sept 2016.
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March 21, 2020 8 Comments
Walking an early morning pavement,
the light path reaching out ahead.
Squeezed in between dark suburban gardens on one side,
and dark cars – jam-packed, bumper to bumper – on the other.
And looking up, to see warning of an intersection;
and the incandescent, surrogate sun itself;
and nothing else beyond but city lights,
twinkling far away in the dark.
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Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended.
Technique: TG-5 at 25mm (equiv); 3200 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Muted profile; south Bristol; 27 Dec 2019.
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March 16, 2020 12 Comments
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Dawn breaking in a cold, clear sky, and a single streetlight shining between the blank, silhouetted hulks of modern housing.
Looking at the scene from the far side of a main road, the upper shot is more or less full frame, with the TG-5 at its longest telephoto setting. But I often get the urge to look closer into images and to make them simpler, more Minimal, and the picture below shows a lower viewpoint that eliminates the aerials and other details on the houses’ roofs, and shows the light now visible in a small notch in the silhouette, beneath a far smaller area of sky; most of this picture is black.. Which – if either – of these images so you prefer? And why?
Click onto the “early morning” tag (below) to see more images from the early hours of the day.
Click onto these images to open larger versions in separate windows.
Technique: TG-5 at 100mm (equiv); 1600 ISO; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Vivid profile; south Bristol; 6 Feb 2020.
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March 7, 2020 27 Comments
1: Path through modern housing
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On 25 Aug 2018, I posted this picture on FATman Photos. I’d been taking long walks around Bristol’s outskirts for sometime and, time and again, had passed this quite mundane scene and been visually attracted by it – and so to the decision to take a camera along on my walks, and to start by photographing this scene. Walking around often empty roads in the dark early mornings with a big camera seemed unwise and so I took to slipping the relatively diminutive Olympus TG-5 TOUGH camera into my pocket. The resulting Outer Suburbs series is now at 200 posts.
And the long walks continue, usually about 5 miles or so. For me, they bring four very real benefits. First, I have been retired (Oh, Happy State!!!) from work for nearly 7 years, and am sure that keeping up some form of physical exercise in these later years is most important; Sue, my doctor, wholeheartedly agrees. Then, second, there are mental health benefits too: I feel relaxed on the walks, they frequently raise my mood, and they give me time to both daydream and to think things through. Third, I have been a naturalist nearly all my life, and these walks give me the chance to commune with Nature – plants and birds, a few mammals (Roe Deer, Foxes – some rats too!), the weather, the changing seasons. And, last, the photography of course: this is never forced, I just have the little camera in my pocket, and point it anything that happens to catch my eye. Sometimes I don’t take any photos at all; but I never let poor photographic conditions deter me – ALWAYS, ALWAYS, its better to have some sort of image rather than no image at all!
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2: the TG-5 (Photo credit: TrustedReviews)
All of the pictures here have been taken with the TG-5 (mine is black). Its compact and light, and disappears completely into my trouser pocket. Hence its totally unobtrusive and, when in use, less intimidating / noticeable than a larger camera. Being a TOUGH camera, it is extremely robust and, amongst other things, waterproof. I don’t use or indeed understand all of its capabilities / controls, but it shoots Raw, which I use for all my photography; has a useful zoom range (25mm-100mm, equivalent); has spot metering; works fine up to at least 6400 ISO; can perform flash and macro work; and, having a small sensor (6.16mmx4.62mm), delivers great depths of focus. I’d prefer it to have a viewfinder and greater telephoto reach, but its still a really handy camera to have around, and to carry anywhere and everywhere.
Trying to select a relatively small number of images from 199 posts is no easy job, and so I’ve tried to show representatives of this project’s main subject areas / genres.
Clicking onto images opens larger versions in separate windows.
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3: Autumn
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4: Bus shelter (with illuminated arrival times) beside a busy main road, a major route into the city from the south. And the first, faint flush of sunrise.
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5: Full English Breakfast – black pudding (the luscious black disc on the left, essentially blood and fat … 😉 sausages; hash browns; fried eggs; mushrooms; toast; bacon (under the toast); fresh tomato; baked beans.
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6: Out walking, and looking down
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7: Bus shelter, wet morning
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8: Greengrocer
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9: Early morning
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10: Early morning gutter with lamp post, frost, moss and banana skin
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11: Human tragedy (the two words say it all)
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12: Stormy sunrise
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13: Laughing gas, nitrous oxide, now the commonest recreational drug in the UK after cannabis
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14: Modern housing
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15: Early morning mist, main road
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16: Starlings, in autumn
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17: Early morning mist, main road
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18: Looking down, this morning
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19: Photographing shadows
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20: Early morning
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21: Foggy morning
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22: Looking up, early in the day
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23: Tree in winter, dawn breaking; my first flash photo for a long time
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March 4, 2020 2 Comments
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Bus stop, sometime around dawn, way out on the edge of Bristol’s outer suburbs.
This is a stop for the Metrobus, Bristol’s new transport system, and on the left a list of its stops: from Hengrove Park, which is up ahead on the city’s edge, to The Centre which – unsurprisingly – is in the city centre.
Click onto the “early morning” tag (below) to see more images from the early hours of the day.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – definitely recommended.
Technique: TG-5 at 25mm (equiv); 800 ISO; spot metering; Lightroom, starting at the Camera Portrait profile; south Bristol; 22 Jan 2020.
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